PITTSBURGH -- Darrun Hilliard II is not sure if he'll watch the rest of the NCAA tournament; he's not sure he can -- not after this.

Another NCAA tournament will march on to the second weekend without the Villanova Wildcats, and Hilliard just doesn’t think he can bear to see it.

“I think I might just go home to Bethlehem [Pennsylvania], hang out with my mom, be away from basketball and maybe eat some McDonald’s or something," the senior guard said. “If I catch a game or something, I catch a game, but maybe I’ll just disappear for a while."

The critics will say disappearing is exactly what Villanova has been doing lately, vanishing like a phantom every March.

The Wildcats went to the Final Four in 2009. Ever since, they haven’t been able to even get to the second weekend, a streak of ignominy that extended to five straight tournament appearances when the No. 1-seeded Wildcats lost 71-68 to the No. 8-seeded NC State Wolfpack in the third round of the NCAA tournament.

They have been beaten by a national champion (Connecticut) and mid-majors (Saint Mary's and George Mason). They have been twice ousted as a No. 2 seed and now once as a No. 1 seed -- a top spot some argued they didn’t deserve, an argument that just received a bunch of ammunition.

The record will say Villanova finished 33-3 with a regular-season Big East title and a conference tournament crown. That’s a pretty accomplished season, but college basketball is not necessarily about how many you lose or even how many you win.

It’s when you lose.

The sport stretches across five-plus months. It calculates success mainly on a three-week stretch. UConn spent the first four months of the past season trying to figure out exactly what it was. A dizzying March run labeled the Huskies the best in the nation.

That’s no more accurate than tagging the Wildcats epic failures based on one horrific, 40-minute stretch. The best team does not always win a national title; the losers are not always the worst teams.

They are often victims -- self-inflicted at that -- of really bad timing.

But that’s a tough sell for any team and a nearly impossible one for a Villanova team turning March flameouts into a trend.

“I know we have to answer to the fact that we did not get to the second weekend again," coach Jay Wright said. “We have to own that. But it’s not going to define us within our program. It’s going to define us outside our program, and we accept that. ... We failed here in this NCAA tournament, and we just gotta accept that, and we’ve got to own it and live with it. But it won’t define us."

The players, eyes rimmed in red and heads buried in towels, echoed their coach’s refrain in the locker room afterward but didn’t say it with a whole lot of conviction.

They know how this works. So does Wright.

The regular season isn’t irrelevant, but it’s not far off.

“It stings, man, it stings," senior JayVaughn Pinkston said. “NC State just put a knife in our hearts."

What really stings is the manner in which the Wildcats went out: playing perhaps their worst game of the season since a bizarre, 20-point thumping at Georgetown. The Wildcats missed everything -- 3-pointers, layups, putbacks and jumpers. They were unable to make buckets from the 3-point arc or from 3 inches away. One of the best shooting teams in the country connected on just 31 percent from the floor and 32 percent from behind the arc -- and that number was inflated by a late-game flurry.

Villanova coupled all that with equally ineffective defense in giving up 34 points in the paint to NC State and allowing the Wolfpack to shoot 45 percent from the floor -- all but rolling over until the final two minutes of the game.

The Cats' furious attempt at a comeback -- fueled by Hilliard’s back-to-back 3-pointers -- fizzled when, down 67-65, Dylan Ennis' 3-pointer missed, and Wolfpack point guard Cat Barber controlled the rebound.

Had the game gone another minute, there might have been a different ending. But let's be honest, if Villanova had won, it would have been thievery, a victory even more inexplicable than the uncharacteristically lousy loss.

Villanova seemed to realize that. The Wildcats knew they didn’t play their best, didn’t deserve to win.

When the game ended, no one from Villanova crouched to the floor. There was no one lying prone in disbelief. Everyone save Pinkston simply got in line to shake hands with the Wolfpack players. Pinkston took only a brief detour, his head hidden in his jersey as he walked to the end of the bench, turned and joined the line.

The sadness hit later, like a sudden wave of nausea. When the locker room finally opened, Hilliard exited, shielding his face with a towel. Ryan Arcidiacono wrapped his arm around his waist as they headed down the corridor for interviews.

“These guys have meant so much to me," Hilliard said. “They’re my brothers, my everything. I grew up an only child, and these guys have been my safe haven. Saved my life. Going out like this, it wasn’t our day, man. It just wasn’t our day."